Objective: Now days,Social capital or social and spiritual dimensions of health
are under attention of social and behavioral scientists. Social capital persuades
individuals to collaborate and coordinate in societal interactions, to become able
to solve their problems and reduce risk taking behavior within the society. The
aim of this article is determining the relationship between social capital and its
dimensions’, and risk taking behaviors among undergraduate students of Tehran
Allamah Tabatabaei University, in 2010.
Method: This survey is a descriptive and correlational study, using Social
Capital Questionnaire (Onyx and Bullen, 2000), and Iranian Adolescents Risktaking
Scale (Mohamadizadeh and Ahmadabadi, 2008). The samples were
selected in random among undergraduate students of Allamah Tabatabaii
University in Tehran. Overall, 372 individuals completed the questionnaires,
while data’s analyzed by SPSS.
Finding: Findings showed negative and significant relations between social
capital, cognitive and communicational dimensions of social capital and risk
taking behaviors in samples, but there was no meaningful correlation between
constructional dimension of social capital and the risk taking behaviors. The
results also indicated that there were meaningful and negative relations between
drinking, smoking, drugs and sexual risk taking behaviors and social capital.
Mean scores of girls, married and employed individuals, were significantly
higher than other group in Social Capital Questionnaire, and Mean scores of
boys, unmarried and unemployed individuals, were significantly higher than
other group in Iranian Adolescents Risk-taking Scale.
Conclusion: The results suggest that authorities should take actions to keep
youths being away from development of risk taking behaviors by improvement
of social and spiritual dimensions of health.